Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
Why I’m winging It
Jim Moir, aka comedian Vic Reeves, reveals how he’s embraced the pleasures of birdwatching and painting
Bein g di by terns and pooped on by puffins is all in a day’s work for Jim Moir as he hosts the second series of his travel-cum-art show.
Painting Birds With Jim & Nancy Moir, co-starring his wife, takes the pair to London to spot peregrine falcons, Derbyshire for dippers, Wales for plovers, and Northern Ireland – where Jim gets the unwanted present from the puffin. Artist Jim, who first found fame as comedian Vic Reeves, then captures the birds on canvas. And he really does know his chough from his chiffchaff. ‘I grew up in the country just before everyone started watching TV all the time,’ says the Yorkshireman. ‘So I was birding from a young age.’
It’s a slow show celebrating simple outdoor pleasures, much like Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing, which stars Jim’s comedy partner
Bob Mortimer. ‘It’s gone down very well,’ says Jim, 65. ‘It’s birds, beautiful scenery and our relationship. Other shows with husbands and wives seem to rely on bickering. We never squabble off camera or on.’ Nancy, Jim’s wife of 21 years and mother of their 17-year-old twins, Lizzie and Nell, adds, ‘Jim teaches me art, and I’m his hearing aid. He can’t hear out of his left ear, so when he listens for birds, I’ll say, “It’s coming from over there.”’ Jim has a noncancerous tumour called a vestibular schwannoma that’s left him deaf in one ear. ‘It’s on the outside of the skull,’ he says. ‘Imagine the telephone in your house and the wires going to the telegraph pole. It’s snipped the wires.’
Jim’s favourite experience of the series was visiting Rockabill Island near Dublin. ‘We were swarmed by thousands of terns,’ he enthuses. ‘But you get divebombed by them, they actually hit you on the head, because they’re protecting the chicks.’ Nancy, 49, was allowed to release a kingfisher into the wild at Walthamstow Wetlands in London. ‘I’d never think in a million years that I’d hold a kingfisher in my hands. It made me really emotional,’ she says. Their showbiz pals pop along to paint and chat. Bob Mortimer was in the first series, and this time guests include singer Imelda May and actor Stephen Mangan. Jim is thrilled when fans tell him the series has encouraged them to take up art. ‘It’s brilliant. Everyone should go birdwatching! Your life will be better.’